Valerie spent the next few hours emailing Cmdr. Lewis, Tom’s mom & dad, Penny’s mom & dad, and getting all of the details she could. A bit shaken, Valerie glanced at the clock, 04:35. She and Brandon were now getting off work, Carl and Jackie were about to hit the rack, and Tom and Sally would be climbing out of bed. Valerie stabbed the intercom to the control deck, “Brandon, is Carl down there?<\/p>\n
“Yes,” he replied. “Do you need him up there?”<\/p>\n
“No, I’ll be right down. I need to talk with both of you, right away.”<\/p>\n
Minutes later Valerie stepped out of the ladder-well on the first deck. “What’s up, Doc?” Carl mugged.<\/p>\n
“No laughing matter, I’m sorry to say. I need your help. Could both of you pull a twelve hour shift for the next few days or so? I just received a confidential email from Mission Support notifying me that Tom’s wife, Penny, has died. I have to break it to him and I believe he will need to take a few days off. He’ll need time to grieve and deal with matters as best he can. He shouldn’t have to worry about the daily duties.”<\/p>\n
“Wow!” Carl exclaimed. “First Sally, now Tom.”<\/p>\n
“What about Sally?” Valerie asked, sharply.<\/p>\n
“She didn’t tell you?” Carl asked in return. “She got an email from her husband, two or three days ago. He’s filing papers for a divorce. I would have thought she had told you about it.” Valerie was silent for a few moments wondering why she was just finding out about this. Dr. Willis would have seen the email from Bobby to Sally. Valerie was surprised that Pam hadn’t given her a heads-up, since the two have been personally acquainted since college, but Pam must report directly to Commander Lewis, so she isn’t permitted to contact Dr. Thomas directly regarding any email correspondence.<\/p>\n
“It seems we have a couple of issues to deal with,” she said, finally.<\/p>\n
“Well, I doubt you’ll have to worry about Sally,” Brandon said. “I was talking to her yesterday and the subject of relationships came up. She confided in me that she was looking forward to moving on. I got the impression things had been a little rocky for some time, now. I’ll keep tabs on her, if you like.”<\/p>\n
“Great!” Valerie threw up her hands. “And which one of us is the ship’s counselor? Anyway, I’m need the two of you to assist with Tom’s duties for a few days.” They both assured her all would be taken care of. Brandon would work over for the next four hours, while Carl got a little sleep. Carl had taken a short nap earlier and felt four hours would do him just fine. Valerie then sighed, “Now for the hard part, I have to go and tell Tom.”<\/p>\n
“Tell me what?” Tom asked, stepping out of the ladder-well. “What’s up?”<\/p>\n
“Let’s go back up to the mid-deck, Tom,” Valerie replied with a solemn look on her face. She gently took hold of his arm, as they walked back into the ladder-well.<\/p>\n
When they were both at the top of the ladder and out of earshot, Carl slowly shook his head saying, “I sure wouldn’t want to be him, right now.”<\/p>\n
Brandon thought for a moment and quietly added, “Nor her. Can you imagine trying to tell someone his wife has died? They’ve been together since high school, if not longer. Emma and I have been together just over twenty years… well, I guess they have too, come to think of it. Still, I can’t imagine living without her.”<\/p>\n
Carl was quiet for a while, just sitting there, thinking about Mary and how much he would miss her, if something like this was to happen to her. After a few moments Carl added, “I’d better get a nap. I’ll be back down at oh-900.”<\/p>\n
“OK,” Brandon said. “Get some sleep. See you at nine.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Valerie spent the next few hours emailing Cmdr. Lewis, Tom’s mom & dad, Penny’s mom & dad, and getting all of the details she could. A bit shaken, Valerie glanced at the clock, 04:35. She and Brandon were now getting off work, Carl and Jackie were about to hit the rack, and Tom and Sally would be climbing out of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chapter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}